Purpose>Purpose Main Idea Practice Test

Economists and headlines often say the economy is overheating. The phrase works because readers can picture a whirring engine that must be cooled to avoid damage. Yet economies are not machines, and the metaphor quietly tilts policy toward pressing the brakes even when the problem is specific. Overheating suggests a single temperature gauge, but what we observe are mismatches: a shortage of child care workers here, a materials bottleneck in housing there. Cooling the whole system may relieve neither. Better language would name the constraint and the fix, such as training subsidies or targeted imports, rather than gesturing at heat. Vivid metaphors are useful introductions, but when they steer decisions, precision matters more.

Last spring, our block's abandoned lot looked exactly like a place people hurried past: chain-link fence sagging, windblown cups snagged in weeds. When Ms. Patel suggested planting a few tomatoes there, I thought she'd get polite nods and nothing more. Instead, on a Saturday morning, four families arrived with shovels; by noon, we had cleared trash, built two small beds, and staked saplings. Over the next weeks, someone added a bench, someone else a painted sign, and the smell of basil replaced the smell of dust. People who had waved from cars started lingering on the sidewalk. A teenager taught a neighbor's toddler to water without flooding the soil. The harvest was modest, but the conversations were not. The lot didn't just change; we did.